Best CSR Software for 2025: A Comprehensive Comparison

Technology plays an indispensable role in facilitating CSR efforts and meeting the diverse needs of companies aiming to enhance employee giving, volunteering, and corporate grantmaking. Each solution has its strengths, making it essential to consider your organization’s unique goals when evaluating which solution is best suited to support your programs and success.

The following list includes the top CSR software vendors in the market, including YourCause from Blackbaud, Bonterra, Benevity, Submittable, and Deed, as well as a handful of emerging vendors, including Groundswell, Percent Pledge, and Goodstack. The information was gathered from G2 reviews, vendor websites, and conversations with current clients.

YourCause from Blackbaud

YourCause from Blackbaud has been around for over 15 years and offers comprehensive solutions tailored for CSR professionals focused on employee giving, volunteering, grantmaking, and reporting. Designed with self-service and mobile-friendly admin tools, YourCause simplifies administrative tasks and allows CSR leaders to concentrate on what matters most – making an impact.

Pros:

• Integrated Platforms: Integrated solutions for employee giving, volunteering, and grantmaking give you a one-stop-shop to manage CSR programs. Reporting tools, including free dashboards with Impact Edge and the market’s first and only generative-AI solution built for CSR pros with Blackbaud Copilot, provide clear evidence of program success, enhancing strategic decision-making.

• Global: Global reach, with access to over 7.5 million nonprofits globally, including 1.65 million that are eligible for employee giving. Additionally, YourCause supports 26 languages (the most in market!), making it versatile for diverse workforces.

• Innovation: The platform’s commitment to continuous innovation is supported by Blackbaud’s significant R&D investment, ensuring the introduction of advanced features like Blackbaud Copilot and ongoing product development.

Cons:

• Cost: While YourCause excels in delivering high-quality support and innovative tools, it’s worth noting that its pricing may be a barrier for companies very minimal budgets. However, the investment can be justified by the platform’s comprehensive features and dedicated support, providing long-term value.

• Mobile App: No mobile-app like Benevity and Deed, but YourCause does offer fully mobile responsive solutions. Research shows only 2% of employees use mobile apps for CSR.

• Custom Development: YourCause also doesn’t cater to custom development work that is super specific to the needs of just one client, where Bonterra often agrees to custom work. Instead, YourCause develops technology based on best practices and client insights to create scalable and configurable solutions to fit the needs of all companies.

Overall, YourCause from Blackbaud stands out for its extensive nonprofit reach and customer support, robust reporting tools, and continuous innovation, making it an excellent choice for companies seeking to elevate their CSR initiatives and drive meaningful impact across employee engagement and grantmaking programs with a long-term technology partner.

Benevity

Benevity is regarded for its solutions aimed at enhancing employee engagement and fostering social impact. They have been a player in the CSR tech landscape for over 15 years and have the largest client base in the market.

Pros:

• Robust Features: Robust employee engagement features, including micro-actions and ‘friendraising’ provide numerous ways for employees to give back beyond basic volunteering and giving.

• Reporting: Solid reporting tools, including their new Reporting Studio and optional Impact Reports add-on. To note, their Impact Reporting is an additional cost.

• Global: Extensive global reach, with 24 language settings and 2 million nonprofits available.

Cons:

• Admin Experience: While it offers robust features, admins have reported that it is challenging to manage the platform, which often requires customer success intervention to make simple changes. There is also increasingly limited customer support, with growing frustrations from customers about how limited they are in making changes to settings in their Benevity solutions.

• Platform Integration: Lack of cohesion between grantmaking and employee engagement solutions, specifically with their more robust Versaic grant offering.

• Cost: Benevity is also a high-cost solution, justified by its extensive offering. Emerging competitors like Goodstack and PercentPledge are a better fit for cost-sensitivities.

Overall, Benevity is best suited for large enterprises looking for comprehensive engagement tools that promote employee involvement and support social responsibility initiatives.

Bonterra

Bonterra came to market in 2022 as a merger between several solutions across the CSR and nonprofit technology landscape. Bonterra’s solutions are tailored to address various aspects of social impact, including volunteer management, donation tracking, and community engagement for the corporate responsibility space. Their CSR products are the results of merging together several solutions, including CyberGrants.

Pros:

• Experience: Their CSR product is mainly comprised of CyberGrants technology, which has been around for 40+ years and supports many Fortune 100 companies.

• Grants Management: Their grantmaking technology is very robust and aligned to support complex programs.

• Single Admin View: Their administrative login is consolidated into one space, meaning you can manage your employee engagement and community investment programs from one admin panel.

Cons:

• Tech-Debt: CyberGrants does carry a lot of tech-debt, and users often complain about the outdated interface, especially for employee engagement

• Cost: Built predominantly for large enterprises, Bonterra’s pricing can be cost-prohibitive for many companies. Additionally, while Bonterra provides robust grant management features, the learning curve may be steep for some users, requiring additional support and training to fully utilize the platform.

• Global: Much more limited global functionality compared to YourCause and Benevity.

Despite these drawbacks, Bonterra remains a contender for companies looking to accelerate their social impact through technology. For large organizations willing to invest time in mastering its capabilities, Bonterra offers significant potential to drive influential and collaborative initiatives, specifically for grantmaking programs.

Deed

Deed specializes in making workplace philanthropy accessible and engaging for employees. The platform excels in fostering participation through its intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Deed’s dynamic features are designed to simplify giving and volunteering activities, ensuring employees can engage in philanthropic efforts.

Deed is a newer vendor in the space, having just really gotten off the ground for their CSR solution in 2019.

Pros:

• Engagement Features: One of Deed’s standout qualities is its ability to create interactive and appealing user experiences, and their user interface is often complimented as ‘cool’ and ‘modern’.

• Platform Management: Deed is a simpler solution compared to the previous ones we covered, making it ideal for programs that aren’t complex.

Cons:

• Reporting: The platform may lack the depth required for detailed impact assessments, which can be a drawback for organizations needing comprehensive data to evaluate their CSR programs.

• Scale: Scalability of the solution might pose challenges for larger enterprises looking to expand their CSR initiatives, as their global capabilities haven’t quite reached market maturity.

In comparison, YourCause from Blackbaud provides extensive reporting tools and robust integration capabilities, making it more suitable for organizations requiring detailed data and scalability. Deed has solidified itself as a solid option in the market over the past several years, especially for companies who need a cheaper alternative to YourCause, Benevity, or Bonterra due to programmatic budget cuts. 

Submittable

Traditionally focused on grantmaking technology across foundation types, Submittable has recently pivoted more into the CSR landscape with their acquisition of WizeHive and Bright Funds. They have sent signals to the market that they would like to be considered as a CSR solution for corporations, with a newer employee giving and volunteering offer.

Pros:

• Submittable has a lot of experience managing grant programs, and has some technology offers that are cheaper and out of the box for smaller grant programs

• Their acquisitions also gained them WeHero, a well-respected volunteering curation service.

Cons:

• Lack of integration: Their acquisitions have gotten them a foot in the door into the CSR vendor market, but they lack cohesion and integration between their products, limiting the customer’s ability to report and manage their solutions with ease.

• Tech-Debt: The acquisitions require sorting through a lot of back-end processes, slowing down their ability to innovate and bring additional value to the market.

Submittable has the potential to service mid to large enterprises effectively in the coming years and can be a solid option for less complex CSR program needs today

Groundswell

Groundswell is known for its approach to employee-led philanthropy. The platform empowers employees to contribute individually or as part of team initiatives, fostering a sense of community within their solution. Groundswell was founded in 2021 on the premise of getting donations disbursed quickly and is bold in their approach to being a new alternative to established vendors in the space.

Pros:

• Donation Disbursement: Ability to fund donations quickly depending on your program setup and what charities are being donated to. This helps with employee confidence and delivers dollars to nonprofits faster so they can expedite their impact.

• User-Interface: The platform’s newness means it has a slick user interface, creating a modern way for your employees to interact with your programs

Cons:

• Feature-Depth: Users report a lack of feature-depth and challenges with reporting. This can be a limitation for companies requiring detailed data to measure the effectiveness of their CSR initiatives.

• Customer Support: Groundswell also has limited staffing due to still being in startup mode, posing challenges for how they will scale as a long-term partner as their customer base grows.

Ultimately, Groundswell’s emphasis on empowering employees and fostering community-driven initiatives makes it a compelling choice for businesses, though it may face limitations for companies that prioritize social impact measurement.

PercentPledge and Goodstack

Both of these are also new vendors in the space, focusing largely on employee giving and volunteering.

Both offer some unique functionality. Goodstack has a payment rails API offering, empowering customers to do things like round up to donate at checkout. PercentPledge offers curated volunteering services.

Pros:

• Cost: Both offer a lower-cost option for customers who are seeking an out-of-the-box, simple solution for their CSR programs.

• UI: Due to their newness, they both have a modern user interface

Cons:

• Feature-depth: On the flipside, their lack of experience in-market also means they do not have as in-depth features and have more limited functionality

• Support and Scale: They also lack robust customer support and success engines, limiting their ability to help customers scale long-term.